In my eyes
by Kreigen
Summary: One shot set after "A New Path". Merrill x f!Hawke warrior. Friendship romance but allowed the Dalish clan to live - an exploration of the consequences/aftermath. Mainly fluff, nothing too angsty. Based on my game decision - wanted to explore this decision as it is not broached in the game, and I feel the quest kind of leaves you with a rock vs hard place. First go at one shot!


Something had to be said.

That expectancy of words…it laid between them like a sleeping Mabari.

They say to let them lie, but what when the dog wakes up? Any powerful hound needs feeding. How much longer until the starving, ravenous expectancy woke of its own accord? Better to shake it up slowly, placate it, offer it food as it wakes into a hazy half-sleep.

Why hadn't she said anything? Surely it was her place to bring it up, say something, crush her, yell at her, anything but this silence!

Hawke turned over to look at her dormant lover.

To do the one thing, the one thing that would hurt her the most, to negate all the reasons the elf had loved her in the first place…it hadn't been easy. To treat the love of your life like a wayward child to be supervised or a pest to be controlled. To walk her, shame wrapped around her neck like a block of steel, parading her through a valley of hateful yet familiar eyes as they ensured she left for good. What had she been thinking? Hawke had let the Dalish live and humiliated a heartbroken woman - practically kicking a Mabari while it was down and then standing on its paws one by one.

But what was the alternative? Wipe out an entire clan, eradicate a unique historical group of people in cold blood? Leave the children orphaned and helpless? Kill the children?

Hawke sighed and reached a hand towards Merrill, but before she could decide whether to touch her or leave her to lay one more night a voice broke the silence.

"I know you're awake Ma Vhenan"

Merrill's soft, sorrowful voice crawled through the moonlit half-light to halt Hawke's hand. Hawke froze.

"Can – can we" Merrill turned over under the cover of their shared bed so she was facing Hawke and gently covered Hawke's exposed hand with her own and pushed it down to the bed, "Can we just…like, oh Hawke I-" her eyes filled with a well of bottled emotion, "Do you really think I – I would…"

Hawke's heart squirmed uncomfortably. This is what you did; all that confidence, all that safety, you destroyed it.

Let her talk, let her talk.

Hawke stayed respectfully silent.

"Do you really think I could hurt people? That you have to…protect people from my blood magic?"

Hawke's body fired up, tense and alerted even more than if a band of Carta thugs had smashed through the bedroom door. At the same time her innards sank faster than a suspicious corpse kicked over the dockyard by Isabella's boot.

What was the alternative? Had there been an alternative?

The expectant Dalish eyes shone and rippled like a midnight lake in the moonlight, the trembling elven lips shook and sent shock waves as violent as any earthquake – and still no words came from Hawke's mouth. Not a word for a woman, no, _the_ woman you love, and betrayed with words.

The pen may beat the sword, but what about the tongue? The voice box? The sound of the one person you trust forsaking you, cutting you with the lexicon of defeat?

Drawing blood from a blood mage always leads to demons, but this one…Hawke couldn't tell whether it was Pride or Rage, maybe even Desire.

"No Merrill" Hawke shuffled slightly closer, "I know you would never try to hurt anyone"

"That's not the same!" Merrill shot back vulnerably, "You can hurt people without trying to!"

Hawke temporarily lost her voice.

"No I understand" Merrill wiped a tear from her pale face, "The keeper, I-"

"No!" Hawke gingerly finished wiping the tear from Merrill's face. "Merrill I didn't mean what I said"

"You don't have to lie Ma Vhenan" she whimpered in response.

Hawke sighed as Merrill turned her face away; she was shielding Hawke from seeing her cry. Hawke could tell when Merrill was weeping though; it made the whole room feel humid with a heavy sorrow, so that breathing only recycled a terrible sadness.

How was she supposed to explain her decision to let the Dalish live without…

Hawke clenched her fist.

…Without frightening her?

The truth was far more sinister than appearances would suggest.

Hawke bit her lip; she couldn't stand Merrill seeing her as some sort of altruistic god while the elf viewed herself as a monster. Not when…

"Merrill…please" Hawke pleaded

Merrilll sniffed and ran her hand across her eyes somewhat surreptitiously and turned back. Before Merrill could speak Hawke cut in,

"If…" she closed her eyes and breathed out heavily, "If I tell you…"

"It's okay Hawke" Merrill's lip was still trembling, "I can-" Merrill drew her hand away, "Leave if that is what-"

"No!" Hawke's heart stopped momentarily as she lunged forward to grab both of the elf's hands, "I…" Hawke gritted her teeth, she had to say it for Merrill's sake, "I _wanted_ to kill them."

Shame overwhelmed her. Hawke let go of Merrill's hands and slunk back into her side of the bed, her face in her hands.

That's it. You've ruined it.

"What?" Merrill sat up abruptly.

"When they said all those things about you, to you, I-" Hawke began to shake also, "I just wanted to _hurt_ them until they shut up. How-" frustrated tears began to sneak out of the corners of her eyes, "How could you live among them so long, and yet – Merrill they don't have a clue who you are or what you are about!"

Merrill sat in stunned silence, her face shocked and mouth open.

"So that's why. I wouldn't let my own selfish blood lust wipe out your kin" Hawke removed her hands from her face to look at Merrill, "Because deep down, how could you ever forgive me if I had slaughtered them all? You'd never look at me the same again! I'd just be…" she met the elf's confused eyes and flinched, "…a blade covered in Dalish blood". Hawke involuntarily eyed her two-handed sword and flinched again. It was all she was after all – this killing machine, cleaving through one fight to the next. It would have been so easy to carve through the poorly armoured Dalish, and yet…at the same time she would have eliminated the one thing her love had worked all her life to preserve.

"That…" Merrill broke the silence for the second time in the night, "I…that's why you said what you said?" her voice was unreadable, her face still in shock.

"Merrill I'm so sorry, I-"

Hawke was stopped by a slender eleven finger across her lips.

Merrill moved to lean and lay across the warrior's body. Hawke felt her heart pound at the elf's proximity and then overload as Merrill's eyes met her own. Merrill moved a hand to brush Hawke's blonde hair out of her eyes.

Was this it? Did it all end here?

Hawke tensed near painfully; she couldn't help but fear what the elf might say in response.

"Is that how you see yourself?" Merrill whispered gently, "As a blade?" she continued.

Hawke made to speak but felt a catch in her throat. She gulped it down forcefully.

"That's all anyone sees me as – Meeran, the Viscount, half of bloody Kirkwall, even Varric-"

Merrill gave Hawke a disproving look.

"…when her first met me at least! Not now I'll admit, but…"

Hawke threw her hands up meekly and let them fall back to the mattress.

"Merrill do you ever get the feeling that you are only as much as other people see you?"

Hawke instantly regretting asking the question as soon as it had left her tongue. It was all too close to the earlier topic - a wayward Mabari that was stalking the conversation waiting for resolution after being awoken.

Merrill however just smiled sadly and moved her right arm over Hawke's body to grab her hand and bring it to her lips.

"Ma Vhenan, how do you think I felt after-" she looked at Hawke, her green eyes brimming with bitter tears, "And then you…" she raised her free hand and wiped an errant tear from her face.

Hawke felt a pain in-between her face and neck stabbing with guilt and remorse. She was how Merrill saw herself, and she had branded her a danger. How could she have been so naïve to think this wouldn't hurt her as deeply as if she had killed the clan? Hawke made to speak but Merrill pre-empted it,

"But now, now I see you were only…" Merrill lowered Hawke's hand that she was still holding and moved her own lithe hand to Hawke's face, "Scared."

Hawke's face burst into an explosion of feeling at the soft touch of the elf's nimble fingers.

"Look at me Hawke"

Hawke seemed unable to look anywhere else but the reflection on the surface of her Dalish lover's eyes.

"Do you think I could ever see you as anything but wonderful?" the elf asked.

Hawke mirrored Merrill and placed her own hand to Merrill's tattooed face.

"You're never a blade in my eyes, can't you see?" Merrill breathed.

It was clear. In the soft gaze that penetrated her own, Hawke saw a different image of herself.

"And you are never a pariah in mine, my love"

Merrill leaned forward to place a kiss upon the human's lips, Hawke met it hungrily.

As long as they had each other's eyes, they could be blind to the rest of the World.


End file.
